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August 27, 2009

There isn't a single anime this season, outside of Mazinger, that I'm actually enthusiastic enough about to stay up to date with. Not that this is unusual for me-- I don't think it's healthy to consume entertainment on deadline-- but even though there's always plenty of good stuff running, none of it has really grabbed me. Bakemonogatari has me a little bit, though. Five episodes worth, anyway.

The show is about words: it's based on a light novel by Japanese novelist NisiOisiN and it's directed by Akiyuki Shinbo, who, if you're familiar with the guy, loves to flash words up on the screen whenever he can. In fact, no matter how much translation work goes into the show-- and my fansubs are pretty comprehensive-- you never really feel as though you fully understand everything going on, because the palindrome author is constantly punning at you. And you don't know Japanese.

The story is about one of these Salinger-type loner protagonists otaku seem to love, and his not-girlfriend, a self-proclaimed tsundere character, as the two leisurely solve mysteries related to ghosts and monsters and stuff like that. The title itself is the Japanese words for "monster" and "story" slapped together, so you can just as easily call it Monstory or Ghostory for the same effect in English, with the added bonus of getting stuffy Wapanese people really angry at you, which, in my experience, is always the cool-guy thing to do.

What people on this show actually seem to do is have long chats about nothing of immediate importance. As I was saying, words come up often. Here's a sample conversation that leads off one episode:

"It's gotta be "lost cow". The kanji for "cow" is part of how you write "snail", right? Take the "whirl" out of "whirlpool", replace the radical for "water" with the one for "bug", then follow it with "cow". And you get "snail"."

So you see what I'm saying here, right? Entire storylines hinge on this kind of thing, like the girlfriend who is weightless because she's numbed herself to some bad memories, because you see, "omoi" can mean both your weight and your feelings, and there are a million other puns besides that in this arc. You can have it explained to you as much as you want: it's not going to hit a non-speaker the way it will hit a native speaker as clever. Though it certainly is clever! The show has a lot other than just wordplay going for it, like Shinbo's distinctive style and characters who are a bit more likable and engaging than their types usually are. And unusually classy fanservice. But at the same time, I'm sure "vegetable breakfast" is some kind of clever wordplay that I'll never understand. I should probably get back to studying Japanese one day, huh?

Everything is connected, guys. I wrote an article on Colony Drop about the Wizardry anime because I was playing The Dark Spire. One day, as I was checking my anime source of choice, the name Wizardry came up. And I said "I'm playing Wizardry right now!" Because I am.

If you're interested in an old-fashioned dungeon-crawler RPG on the DS, look up the Etrian Odyssey games. They're great! It's intimidating to start with, but as your guys get stronger, the game becomes a breeze. If you're played Etrian Odyssey, on the other hand, and you think it goes too easy on the player, what with its low difficulty curve, and the way the game tells you where you are on the map-- how am I even going to get lost-- then look into Dark Spire. It's ten bucks nowadays, and it's not hard to find. Nobody really wants it but you.

Dark Spire is so old-school that you can actually switch the game's graphics down to "classic" mode, replacing the 3D dungeon with a monochrome outline of itself, the music with bleepy chiptunes, and the enemies with sprites from the 8-bit era. I turned this on as soon as the game started and I haven't switched it off: if you're gonna do this, you gotta do it all the way.

Dark Spire is so old-school that you can't even see how strong your weapons are: you just have to look at the price and the results and decide whether or not one piece of equipment is better than another. Armor uses the old Dungeons and Dragons "armor class" system, where lower is better, and swings in the almighty dice roll can, in one shot, determine your fate, usually in the direction of death. This is not a game you're going to be able to run through as fast as you can: you're going to spend a ton of time on the very first floor of the dungeon, both exploring and grinding for money and experience. This isn't even a fair game: keeping multiple saves, and saving every few encounters, is advisable. There are so many situations where even if you survive, loading up your last save is preferable to continuing to play. If you're in the mood for a challenge, then by all means, go for it.

Speaking for myself, the game got me with the flavor text. The game's on a really low budget, and a lot of the time it doesn't actually illustrate what's in front of you, instead dropping you into an empty room and saying, for example, that this is actually a fully furnished bedroom. You're allowed to check around, and the game will tell you in great detail what you don't see in front of you. Especially in the minimalist classic mode, touches like this actually create a weird sort of immersion: because every corridor, every room looks exactly the same, you start to fill in the blanks in atmosphere with your head. Atlus' excellent localization job on the flavor text just helps along this mental effort. I usually play my DS games on the subway, but I feel like that would ruin this one. Dark Spire is a game for right before bed, with all the lights off.

August 24, 2009

After years of work, the Policenauts Translation Project has finally achieved their goal: Hideo Kojima's 1994 adventure game Policenauts-- a game famous mostly for the fact that non-readers of Japanese couldn't play it for so long-- is finally fully translated into English. Check the "patch" section of the site, and then follow the helpful instructions included with it. No, I will not provide tech support.

This is important to you, video gamers, and this is important to you, anime fans. If you don't know Kojima (unlikely, if you found a site like this), he's a pretty big deal in videogames. A long, long time ago, Kojima created the Metal Gear series, which was resurrected in the late 90's as Metal Gear Solid, which in turn grew into to one of the Japanese videogame industry's only blockbuster videogame franchises. Since then, Kojima-- despite repeatedly expressing interest in doing other stuff and saying that every MGS game will be the last he works on-- just cannot get away from Metal Gear. It's so successful and so important that it's cursed the man. Policenauts was Kojima's last project before Metal Gear Solid, and it was nearly as ambitious.

Policenauts is a spiritual successor to Kojima's other adventure game, the cult classic Snatcher. Now Kojima always wanted to be a film director-- he just ended up a game designer, is all-- and on top of his games cribbing from his favorite movies (Snatcher from Blade Runner, Policenauts from Lethal Weapon), Kojima's also made a concerted effort to make games more like films. Snatcher is often referred to as a "digital comic" because of the way scenes were displayed onscreen as panels. Policenauts is something of a technological evolution from Snatcher: it's an adventure game that presents the illusion of playing a movie, with as little intrusion from the game as possible.

Everything is at least a little animated in Policenauts, and it's done lavishly by AIC, who you might remember from Tenchi Muyo and a wave of products that were like Tenchi Muyo but a little bit different. Major conversations are all voiced by a cast that some of you are going to remember from anime: Kikuko Inoue and the late Kaneto Shiozawa spring immediately to mind. Mechanical designs are courtesy of Hajime Katoki, for you robot lovers in the room. It wouldn't be too off-target to call Policenauts an anime that you play, but with infinitely higher production values than you'd see in the visual novel, which merely passes for playable anime these days. Since adventure games-- and 2D graphics, for that matter-- were already on the way out in the 90s, there really aren't very many games quite like Policenauts.

This cinematic quality in Kojima's games is a strength and a weakness: in Metal Gear, Kojima's famously overblown dialogues have regularly been criticized as getting in the way of the action game that takes place between them. But Snatcher and Policenauts are adventure games, and since you're explicitly playing for the story, you get what you came for: a big, heavy story that takes place in a seriously detailed world. Even as an MGS fan, I think these games suit Kojima more than Metal Gear does, and I wish somebody at Konami would let him make another one, even though I know it wouldn't sell. But until then, why not play this? Then go back and play Snatcher, too. You won't regret either one.

Well, gang, Energer Z is here and it's not pleased. Apparently piloted by Kenzo Kabuto-- who should be dead-- the prototype charges Kurogane House and Kouji has to take it on in Mazinger. Things don't go well: the robots have the same armament and Energer wins every clash. As Mazinger gets tossed around like a rag doll, the episode centers on the people inside of Kurogane House, where we spend most of the episode in a flashback and finally figure out the circumstances of the "deaths" (because who knows, really) of Tetsuya Tsurugi and Kenzo Kabuto.

Kenzo seems to have come for the arm of Zeus, which you'll recall was found buried deep inside Bardos Island by the Kabutos, Dr. Hell, Tetsuya and Tsubasa on their expedition. This arm, sliced from Zeus' arm by Hades in the distant past, is the source of Japanium ore, which is the source of Super Alloy Z, which is, of course, what Mazinger and Energer are made out of. Tetsuya says outright what you, if you watched Giant Robo, might have already guessed at: Japanium is sentient, and Photon Power is the life energy of Zeus.

Of course, it isn't long before ol' Dr. Hell decides he wants such a bombshell for himself, and so he betrays everybody. Of course, he's not the only one: it's revealed that Kenzo, hungry for power and possessed by a Kedora, also took part in this rebellion. As things turn out, Tetsuya holds Kenzo down, and Tsubasa has to make a shot that kills both men... except both men seem to be alive and kicking in the present, and though I've assumed they are ghosts, the show has made no explicit statement to that effect.

I should note that Tsubasa's voice actress is not very convincing during these flashbacks in the role of "naive young scientist, not yet hardened to the ways of the world."

And so, back in the present time, Pygman's proposal is this: give Dr. Hell Zeus' arm, and he, Tetsuya, the rampaging Energer Z, and Tsubasa's live-threatening spirit sickness will simply disappear. (No reason not to go along with this, right guys?) Tsubasa's response is this:

FUCK YOU

GOD SCRAAAANDERRRRR

That's right, it was lying around at Kurogane House this whole time. Talk about a cliffhanger. Get hype for next week!

August 19, 2009

Guys, I'm about to throw you a curveball. You're going to see something here tonight that you may never see again. I am going to negatively review a Fist of the North Star product. I said it now because I want to save you the shock, the hurt that this might otherwise cause. If you've been following this blog for a while, you might have gathered that I'm a big fan. I don't really like saying mean things about Fist of the North Star, you know? But we have to face up to facts. One spoiler is ahead: I cared so little about the story that I won't bother avoiding it.

If you don't know the franchise, Fist of the North Star/Hokuto no Ken is pretty much the greatest: a little western, a little kung-fu, a little post-apocalypse and a ton of melodrama make for one of the most enduring Shonen Jump classics. You can watch the entire TV series on Hulu here, but I recommend you stop once Fist of the North Star 2 starts: it's not very good.

See, it's a long story, and a big franchise surrounds it, in both animated and comic form. They're not all good. Offhand, I can think of the Shin Hokuto no Ken OVA series, the entire latter portion of the original manga and TV series... and this movie. The film's particularly disappointing because what had come before was so good: over the last couple years there's been a large-scale revival of the franchise in the form of three movies and two OVAs released in between. The movies and the OVAs are retellings of major plot points in the story, but they're a little closer to the dead serious manga, bypassing a lot of the camp and more over-the-top elements of Toei's TV series (which is fantastic precisely because of these elements).

In any case, the movies and OVAs came out quite well, and I was looking forward to the last movie because I was curious what they'd do. The second movie ends right at the end of the first part of the story: it's definitely the best part of the entire franchise. The second part of the story only really exists, as with many Shonen Jump franchises, because Jump authors are pressured to keep a story going for as long as possible. Everybody's consensus is that it's best forgotten (except for Tough Boy), and the sizable merchandising arm of the franchise pretends it doesn't exist. And so, despite the fact that the second movie appears at some points to be leading into Hokuto no Ken 2, that movie wasn't going to happen.

Instead, we get an original story that has little to do with anything. You see, there's a hole in the Fist of the North Star timeline. A long time ago, our hero Kenshiro was beaten nearly to death by rival martial artist Shin, who scarred him and stole his betrothed Yuria by force for good measure. At the beginning of the film, Kenshiro and Yuria, having reunited and ridden off into the sunset, have an impromptu wedding in a destroyed church, after which they have a chat. Having been separated so long, Yuria wants to know exactly how Ken got all the way back to her, and Ken obliges, starting, of course, from the fateful moment of their parting. This is probably the only part of the movie I really enjoyed: Ken and Yuria aren't shown together for very long after they're reunited in the original story. It's nice to see them able to smile again.

(By the way, she's pregnant now, and that doesn't make a lot of sense at this point in the story.)

Ken's story is a part in the timeline that had been left empty: before Ken is left for dead and the love of his life taken from him, the character is portrayed as too naive for the harsh world he lives in. Afterwards, Ken is the stone-cold badass we know and love, a man who kills without regret for the sake of the oppressed. Those guys are just gonna come back and kill children if you let 'em live! The movie attempts to fill in the process that led to this shift in character. Unfortunately for the movie, "nearly beaten to death and robbed of his beloved" is a far better explanation for what happened to Ken than this 80-minute theatrical filler episode.

Probably the biggest problem with this movie is because Ken got his ass kicked so hard by Shin, he is basically out of commission for the entire first hour of the film. A weak Kenshiro is not a lot of fun to watch, and with him out of action, it's up to the rest of the cast to carry this movie. They can't. As Ken lies around half-conscious in the wild, he's abducted by slave traders. With him are a family, whose children play replacements for Lin and Bat, Kenshiro's kid tagalongs who haven't yet appeared in the story. The village they are being held in, as with all villages in Fist of the North Star, is under the control of a madman who hoards the water supply. When the village comes under siege by an army led by a user of Nanto Seiken martial arts-- as is the fate of all villages in Fist of the North Star-- Ken has to man up and take care of things. The theme song plays, but it feels kind of cheap.

For Kenshiro, it's the first time he's ever done this, but for us, it's redundant. His development-- being moved to action by the pure hearts of the children and the villagers, as usual-- doesn't really work here because not a single person around him is compelling. Like the much-maligned HnK2, the movie leans too hard on the appeal of the old characters, even shoehorning in cameos and callbacks that have no particular reason to be. Kenshiro's change from wishy-washy to badass happens instantly (in one of the few cool scenes, Ken totally breaks out of a crucifixion like Ultra Jesus), and even in the crazy world of HnK, it doesn't really ring true to me.

There's also a serious dive in production values from the first two films, resulting in what few fights the film has turning out unsatisfying. Even in the movie's biggest fight, the same kind of stock animation-- stills, speed lines, repeat footage-- I'd expect of the TV series is used. The director is Toshihiro Hirano, who was pretty big in the 80s OVA wave of silly, violent exploitation, so I expected quite a bit more from him! But even worse is that just when Ken's saved the village, the whole place gets arbitrarily blown up, every last villager dies, and the whole business was completely beyond Kenshiro's ability to do anything about it. And then the movie just ends. The whole movie was about Ken gathering the resolve to make a difference, and it completely invalidates itself in the final minutes.

As if sensing the audience's disappointment in advance, the movie closes with a re-enactment (in still frames, with dialogue handled with cards, like a silent film) of the first episode of Fist of the North Star, which chronologically follows this movie. The stills are beautifully colored, but this bit is six minutes long, and the main feature already seemed strapped for cash. At the end, they switch to animation, and the movie ends with the famous Hokuto Hyakuretsu Ken scene. At least they let people walk out of the theater with "you're already dead" in their heads. Kind of wipes out the bad memories.

August 18, 2009

It shouldn't be a huge surprise to any of you that people on the internet are either crazy, assholes, or both, particularly when it comes to online gaming services. The internet puts up the veil of anonymity that turns most people into slobbering hyenas, and online gaming seals the deal by actively turning us all against each other. With the current-gen systems offering simple communication tools, it's no surprise to receive the equivalent of an angry Youtube comment after a match. The above post is from a Street Fighter IV player who opted to reject defeat by exiting the game before I could land the final hit on him, but things like these are a dime a dozen. The reason I've been photographically recording XBL messages in the first place is that over the last few months, I've gotten some really weird ones, mostly from one account. They get pretty salty, so enjoy the cut. If you're at work, turn back now and you get to keep your job.

August 17, 2009

As bizarre as the last arc was, Imagawa shows no sign whatsoever of slowing down his train. If you thought machine-brain memory time travel was nuts, get ready for some really loopy shit getting set up this week.

Remember the end of last episode, where we were about to see the death of Juuzou Kabuto? Well, that's too bad, because while Kouji got to see it, you didn't. Kouji only says that he "saw a lot of things in that Corinthian pillar", and he doesn't sound like he enjoys recalling them. Other than this, things at Kurogane are (kind of) back to normal, in that they're serving customers-- Boss and friends have taken over for the Kurogane Five, all of whom are definitely dead save Kiku-- and at war with ol' Dr. Hell again. Ashura's been taken in for the time being, because Ashura needs a place to hide from Dr. Hell, and because the Kurogane guys really need help: something has come up.

Ashura has to diagonose a bedridden and madness-prone Tsubasa, and as it turns out, Viscount Pygman is laying down an indirect assault. Since, owing to the events of the last few episodes, Dr. Hell can't attack directly, Pygman has instead opted to haunt Tsubasa with the ghost of a certain person. Though it doesn't speak, the spirit is somewhat vengeful, and Tsubasa certainly seems to bear some kind of crippling guilt that's amplified by the haunting and slowly killing her. So who is it? Get this: it's the ghost of Tetsuya Tsurugi.

If you're familiar with Mazinger lore at all, you'll recognize Tetsuya as the pilot of Great Mazinger, Mazinger Z's eventual replacement. You won't recognize him in any other way, though. Those eyebrows aren't half as thick as they used to be! In this story, Tetsuya has become the pilot before Kouji, having used a prototype built by Kenzo Kabuto and having died under unexplained circumstances. Being a ghost, Tsurugi just sits around quietly, being a drain on Tsubasa's dirty conscience. This brings up a lot of points. Is the "Blade" character who appeared in the first episode a different entity? Was the momentary appearance of Great Mazinger a total red herring? Who knows, man? This show is crazy.

It isn't long after all this is explained and set up that the aforementioned prototype is blasted into the earth like a falling comet, and it approaches Kurogane, piloted by Kenzo Kabuto (wait, what?). Its name? Tesshou Genda is here, as ever, to give it an extra-powerful "I am so hype that I am completely losing my mind" yell. The name of the robot is Energer Z. I can't even count the amount of times I've rewound the episode to this scene. Genda, you are the best. At this rate it looks like we have room for this arc, and then the final battle with Ankoku Daishogun. The best possible outcome would be Bandai allowing Imagawa to make an Ankoku Daishogun movie, but that's too awesome to ever happen.

August 14, 2009

So there's this very interesting press release going around. You might be aware that Europe doesn't have an official release of Blazblue yet: PS3 owners could import, as the console is region-free, but 360 games are typically locked down, so European 360 owners have been SOL (get it?). The European release of Blazblue isn't coming until early 2010, but the European publisher-- who seem to be a conglomerate of Japanese devs-- has used a key phrase: "new gameplay content not available anywhere, like new characters and moves."

The current fan speculation from the skip-directly-to-outrage-and-tears fanbase-- that Arc would for some reason
make content exclusive to the European console version of the game,
leaving everybody else out in the cold-- is pretty silly, especially in
this age of downloadable content. It's safe to assume that whatever is
in the European version will turn up on the US/JP versions via download. Anyway, this is interesting!

The rumor I've been going with puts a Blazblue update at October. I don't use this because it's backed up in any way, I use it because approximately a year after the first arcade release feels about right for Arc, going by the rate at which they released the many Guilty Gear upgrades. A year of vigorous playtesting in the tourney circuit has definitely pointed the way for the balance tweaks. We know which characters need to be toned down just a little bit (Nu, Arakune, Rachel), and we know who needs help (Tager, Hakumen, Bang, Carl). And of course, absolutely nothing happens in the story mode aside from setting up for a sequel. It's definitely time for this.

The odd thing is that this is the first official word we have gotten from anybody about new Blazblue material. It feels like it must have been a slip of the tongue, to be hearing about this before Arc has said a word about their inevitable upgrade. If it's not total bullshit, it confirms, in one fell swoop, both the arcade upgrade and possibly the home port of that upgrade.

This is unusual because at minimum, it takes about nine months for an arcade game to get ported to console these days. Arcade developers are not in a hurry to get a $60, infinitely replayable copy of their game out on the market because they need to make their money at the arcade at $1 a play. Home ports typically hurt arcade revenues. Look at Tekken for an example: After the relatively early home release of Tekken 5 put a hit on T5's arcade business, Namco Bandai just didn't bother with a home release for Tekken 6, instead opting to sit on the massive earnings Tekken has continued to pull as the #1 arcade game in Japan. It's only coming out on the consoles now, two years after the game's release to the arcades in late '07.

Arc isn't doing badly with Blazblue in the arcades themselves, and it would be really weird for them to release a console port only a few months into the game's arcade life... or would it? Even with the home port out, Blazblue is comfortably #3 in Arcadia's popularity rankings. Third Strike and Accent Core have been available for console for years, and they're still up there. As good as BB's online is, I go down to Chinatown Fair all the time for lagless competition against much stronger players. And you know what? At CF, nearly all of the popular games have been available on console for years. And yet people still visit! Is the arcade irreplaceable after all? In my heart it is.

Meanwhile, the console port of Blazblue has generated tremendous goodwill within not just the fighting game niche, or just the niche within a niche that actually has access to an arcade in the west, but the greater gaming community at large. (By contrast, look at SNK and KOFXII's home port and reception.) Isn't it more productive to serve this very large audience as well as the arcade players? Street Fighter 4 has gotten a ton of people into the genre through its home release, and some of those people have even become serious genre fans, arcade-goers and even tourney players. Meanwhile, the arcade audience continues to dwindle in Japan and is so niche in the West as to be microscopic. I don't think home releases are going to kill the demand for arcade games: in the fighting game scenario, they just might help to kindle it.

In conclusion, Sega should port Virtua Fighter 5R to the 360 and PS3, but they won't, so don't get your hopes up.

August 10, 2009

Well, last time the gang was in whole heap-a trouble: surrounded by Mycenae troops and Ashura in the hands of the enemy. On top of that, the cliffhanger ending was Garadoublas stepping on everybody. How to make it out of this one alive? Well, you don't, really. Not all of you, anyway. The currently present members of the Kurogane Five all bite it one after the other in this episode, and the first casualty is Cross, who uses his Super Alloy ZEEEETTO arms to keep Garadoublas' foot up long enough for Kouji and Tsubasa to escape to the Pilder, which Sensei and Django have flown in. Now it's a laser-eyed robomonster versus a tiny hovercraft, which doesn't go so awesome.Yasu is the second sacrifice, blowing himself up with the Photon Power bomb inside of him in order to distract Garadoublas as the survivors get away in the Pilder.

Everybody regroups overnight: Tsubasa and crew are working out a way to attack the Kedora itself, and Duke Gorgon is looking to trick Zeus into a truce and sucker punch him when he agrees to it. And Zeus is a big, cosmic Good Guy, you know? He's seen countless intergalactic wars, and he knows Duke Gorgon and his buddies were scheming about destroying all the humans a little while ago... but hey, these dudes are probably legit. So Zeus powers down and the obvious takes place: Hades sets ancient Greece on fire and takes off Zeus' arm for good measure. Hades, dammit!

Check this dude! One of the three great gods of the Mycenae! God of the land of the dead! (Poseidon is shown in passing: will we see him, too, before this show is done?) From here on in it's a big old throw-down: Kouji has to save Ashura, hop into a waterlogged Mazinger Z, and both take down Garadoublas and help his new bro Zeus with Hades. Django and Master have to kill and be killed by Duke Gorgon, and Tsubasa and Baron Ashura have to do some crazy time paradox kinda shit.

To get to the Kedora, Ashura has to open a door that their halves, Tristan and Iseult, had sealed away with that whole "buried-alive-together" business you might remember from earlier of the show. They're betraying themselves, Gorgon, and the Mycenae by taking this action, but hey, what are you gonna do? Ashura belongs to Dr. Hell now. (Note that I must use the "them" pronoun for Ashura, despite avoiding them the entire run of the show, because this situation is too weird) This leads to the wonderful situation of Tsubasa gleefully machinegunning a room of monster-insect-machine brains while Ashura weeps on the floor.

Meanwhile, Zeus is being a really good sport about this whole business of getting his ass saved by a puny human. When he sees Mazinger's rocket punch, dude opts to pick up his own hand and baseball pitch it into Hades' flaming maw, screaming ROCKET PUUUUNCH. What a cool guy! You'd definitely want to get a beer with Zeus. Hades is defeated on the spot, and he warns us that soon, very soon, the plot of the classic Mazinger Z vs. The Grand General of Darkness will take place in this very cartoon. Afterwards, the dying Kedora wants to show us one last memory: the death of Dr. Juuzou Kabuto. But it's going to have to wait for next episode, and considering how slow I was to get this done, that next episode post might come sooner than usual!

August 06, 2009

Hey guys, been a while! From what I heard, the translator's computer broke, and then the subbing group decided to give us two Mazinger episodes at once. This, in turn, has slowed my Mazinger posts as I work on a number of articles and secret space projects. Forgive all of us. By the way, did you know that Mr. Imagawa is going to be at Anime Weekend Atlanta this year? I am pretty agonized by this announcement: Barring the miracle of full-time employment, I will probably not make AWA. So please, attend the con in my place. I'll think of some questions for him. Anyway, let's talk about the cartoon!

(Second spoiler warning: people are dropping like flies in the next two episodes)

Last time on Mazinger, Duke Gorgon was most displeased. Dr. Hell has been running Bardos Island, ordering around its giant stone guardians, and putting indiscriminately murderous machine-brains into his giant robots without actually knowing what was up with the place. Now that Gorgon-- a Mycanean himself-- is here, he's taken back his island, and even though he only stays alive for about two minutes, he royally screws everyone. Never mind how, but a huge ancient Greek-styled pillar rises up out of Bardos, and the surviving Kedora from last episode scurries inside of it. Now possessed, the pillar sprouts monster tendrils and attempts to assimilate the Photon Power Labs in turn. There's Japanium-- the world's strongest substance, naturally, and the source of Super Alloy Z-- down there!

The consequence of the Kedora taking over the labs would be a photonic super-meltdown, and remember, last time we had an overload of Photon Power, Mazinger turned into Maoh Dante and decided he'd destroy everything. This would not be pleasant. And so it is that Dr. Hell and Kouji form an uneasy truce against the common enemy of the Mycenae: Kouji, Tsubasa, the Kurogane Five sans Kiku, and Baron Ashura (you knew Ashura was alive) charge into the pillar and end up... in ancient Greece?

Kind of: they've entered the memories of the Kedora as a Mycenae soldier. This gets kind of confusing, so bear with me. Gorgon still exists here, as do the man and woman who were eventually stitched together to form Ashura. By the way, they are actually Tristan and Iseult. Except they're Mycenae! And priests! As our heroes arrive, Zeus has gone rogue and is single-handedly fighting the Mycenae, because where Zeus wants to be a friendly occupier, everybody else wants to conquer the Earth and kill its inhabitants. Unfortunately for Kouji and friends-- and I have no idea what the explanation for this is, considering they are inside a brain-- they are not invisible observers and immediately get in trouble with the Mycanae army, who can and do hurt them. Things look particularly bad for Yasu and Cross.

It's hard not to sympathize with this incarnation of Baron Ashura, whose characteristic stupidity has been developed into a childish personality who's honestly worthy of the audience's pity. His separated halves seem not to have much going on their heads save "conquest, mwahahaha!," and between the three of them, nobody has any idea what to do with this two-faced, strangely familiar human monstrosity weeping in front of Tristan and Iseult.

Did I mention that Doublas M2 and Garada K7 were once themselves but two halves of a greater whole, the Mycaenae hero GARADOUBLAS? Because shit, that is awesome.